Features & build

It's almost too portable, in the same way a wedding cake can be too pretty to eat. But size aside, it’s hardly a music player of humble stature. For £50 you get a player that can handle hi-res music – WAV support goes up to 24-bit/96kHz, while FLAC is limited to 24-bit/48kHz.

There’s 8GB internal storage onboard – enough for over 200 MP3 albums, or around ten hi-res albums – and that can be expanded with a microSD card up to 64GB that slots into the bottom of the unit.

Just alongside it, there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack and a microUSB slot for charging. A 2.5 hour-charge gets you 24 hours playback time, only slightly longer than it took our team to attach the M3’s lanyard accessory.

Sound

Drive and ardour are very much the FiiO’s sonic fibre, so we kick things off with Animal Collective’s The Burglar (16-bit/44.1kHz).

The psychotropic synths are communicated with welcome chutzpah, and the FiiO has the clarity and precision to avoid tripping over the song’s experimental rhythms and unconventional structure. You get the chance to hear (if not entirely follow) what’s going on.

Onto Lubomyr Melnyk’s Pockets of Light (24-bit/44.1kHz) and there’s detail where it counts, each piano note distinct and cohesive – even if a great deal of the 19-minute piece’s dynamic variance is largely overlooked.

A pleasing degree of tonal balance and weightiness helps the M3’s case too.

We find the presentation of rivals from Sony (NW-F886) and LG (G5) a bit more spacious though, which becomes a crucial asset when the layered melodies become more convoluted and the vocal washes over the top.

The bottom line is, if you’re pursuing hi-res audio – above CD-quality music – you’d be better off getting a loftier (in quality and price) smartphone or even a hi-res music player from the likes of Sony and Astell & Kern.

The buds in the box aren’t particularly ergonomic, nor are they good enough to make the most of the FiiO’s talents. We’d file them under ‘emergency only’ and employ something like the SoundMagic E10S at the bare minimum.